Sales of General Motors' vehicles have screeched to a halt in the US as the few buyers in the plunging auto sales market shunned its portfolio of gas-guzzling trucks and four-wheel-drives in the last quarter.

Today the company announced a net loss of $15.5bn, equal to $27.33 per share, compared with a profit of $891m, or $1.56 per share last year. Excluding one-time items, GM posted a loss of $6.3bn or $11.21 per share.

Those $9.1bn in one-time items included $3.3bn for buyouts of US factory workers, $2.8bn for its exposure to bankrupt former parts unit Delphi and $1.6bn to write down lease values.

Sales for the quarter fell to $38.2bn from $46.7bn a year earlier.

Even without the one-time charges, analysts were way off regarding how dire the position is at GM. On average they had forecast a loss on that basis of $2.67 per share, according to Reuters Estimates, and had looked for revenue of $42.36bn.

The company expects the bad news to continue as it awaits the introduction of small cars to appeal to buyers, shell-shocked by petrol prices at $4 a gallon.

As all the automakers look to introduce small models in north America, GM has two small cars coming by 2011, the Cruze compact car and a new version of the Aveo subcompact, in addition to its electric entry, the Chevrolet Volt. Referring to the Aveo, chief operating officer Fritz Henderson said today it was the first 1.4 litre, 4 cylinder car GM had ever built in America.

In the last quarter GM burned through $5bn in cash and credit in the quarter and its liquidity has become an increasing concern. GM ended the second quarter with $21bn in cash and $5bn in credit facilities, and chief executive Rick Wagoner said there is enough cash to operate.

"The results that we announced today were fully contemplated in the liquidity plan we put together, and so, between the credit facilities and the actions we took - $15bn in liquidity in total - that covers our needs through '09, even considering continued weak US markets for the remainder of this year and next year," Wagoner said in a television interview. Wagoner, in his ninth year as CEO, has posted $69.8bn in losses since 2004.

The two pieces of good news in today's announcement were the fact that GM made money in both its European and Latin America-Africa-Middle East region, posting a $20m and $445m profit respectively. It made a loss in Asia Pacific.

Chief financial officer Ray Young said in a conference call today the company maintained a stable market share in the UK and there was strong growth in Russia. Its European figures were hurt by the strengthening of the euro versus the pound. Henderson said the company's growth in emerging markets was "phenomenal".

Investors, not surprisingly, did not like the results and sent GM's shares down 9% to $10.05 in early trading on Wall Street. The shares have traded as high as $43.20 in the past year. The new share price is near a 54-year low, according to Reuters.